Extract from House of Commons Hansard    Debates for 28th March 2007

Theatre Funding

Mr. Neil Gerrard (Walthamstow):

I shall be brief because I know that other hon. Members want to speak. I welcome the debate and the contributions that have been made so far—particularly the opening speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Glenda Jackson).

As my hon. Friend said, a look at the finances and at what has happened over the past few years reveals that the Government were responsible for some massive increases in theatre funding in 2000. There is no question about that—it was absolutely unprecedented. If we compare where we are now with where we were in 1997, we see that Arts Council funding to subsidised theatres has more than doubled in the intervening time. There is therefore no question but that there has been an enormous improvement. However, that improvement has been slowing down, particularly since 2005.

Since 2000, there has also been an increase in private funding to those same theatres, and it is no coincidence that that increase has happened at the same time as the increase in public subsidy, because private investors will put money in when they have some confidence in where the sector is going. In itself, therefore, that increase in private funding illustrates the importance of public funding.

If we look at the consequences of that investment between 2000 and 2005, we see that there has been a dramatic improvement in the financial status of many theatres and that collective deficits have been wiped away. There has also been an increase in the number of performances. In addition, it was striking that the Arts Council submission to the comprehensive spending review, which looked at the effects of the spending that I described, noted that there had been a significant increase in the number of new works that had been commissioned. I shall return to that later, but the number of such new works is a key indicator of the health of the theatre. Between 2000 and 2005, there was a more than 20 per cent. increase in the number of such works.

There have also been increases in the work force and big increases in the levels of educational activity delivered through theatres. In some of the major regional theatres, furthermore, there have been significant increases in attendance. One survey showed that 40 per cent. more people had visited such theatres over the period that I mentioned.

I spent 10 years on the board of the Theatre Royal Stratford East, although I am no longer a board member. The theatre is one of the really important producing theatres in the country and has prided itself on innovation over the years, going back to the time of Joan Littlewood and the Theatre Workshop. It relies on developing new work, not on touring performances or on going back to well-known plays. In particular, it has an outstanding record on developing new work by black and minority ethnic writers and performers.

From my time on the board, I know how important public sector funding is for the theatre, and that includes the funding that it got from the Arts Council and the local authority in Newham, which was a generous supporter of the theatre. Without that funding, the theatre would not have been able to do the work that it did. Nor would it have been able to take the risks that are inherent in being a producing theatre that develops new work. When a theatre does such work, it is inevitable that things will not always come off and that there will be a flop. That is just part of the business of developing new work, but it is difficult for a theatre to take such risks if it feels that it is in the business of having to turn in a profit at the end of every week and every month.

We want to have innovation in the theatre and to encourage new writers, new performers and audiences, particularly among the black and minority ethnic communities in places such as Stratford. We would never have seen such people in the theatre some years ago, but they are now taking part in significant numbers on the stage and in the audience. However, we will not achieve that without the public subsidy to enable theatres to work. If nobody is there doing that work and taking the risks, theatre as a whole will be poorer as a result.

Public subsidy is essential for core funding. It is possible to ask sponsors to sponsor a show, and although they might be interested in big events to which they can attach their name, they are never interested in the core, day-to-day funding that keeps a theatre running. My experience from serving on the board of the Theatre Royal Stratford East, which is, as I said, one of the most important developmental theatres in this country, was that its projects would never have worked without public subsidy. I therefore hope that we shall not go down the road of cutting back. We put in enormous investment in 2000 and we have seen developments, but I hope that we will not see them start to slip away.

Let me just add to the point about the Olympics. I represent one of the five Olympic boroughs, so I shall see some development in my area, but I do not want that to happen at the expense of the arts and the theatre.

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